[CAROLINA JOURNAL] The director of state facilities for the mentally ill and developmentally disabled said his department will continue to offer annual voter registration and voting assistance for patients and residents. He also said that while efforts are made to notify patients' guardians about voting activities, a patient's right to vote takes priority over any objections from guardians.

J. Luckey Welsh, director of the Division of State Operated Healthcare Facilities at the Department of Health and Human Services, told Carolina Journal there are about 3,000 people residing in the state facilities.

Enough to tip a close election. Just ask Al Franken...

Voting records obtained by CJ showed only 73 individuals from six facilities cast votes that were accepted for the Nov. 6 election. Sixty-one of those voters were new registrants. "I think we allowed our citizens the right to vote. I am happy we allowed them to do it," he replied.

The laws and rules governing voting by mentally challenged individuals remain murky, and it's unclear whether state employees who assisted disabled patients and residents to cast ballots at early voting sites were complying with the law.

The registration drives were conducted for the Nov. 6 election even though federal law requires facilities to determine whether patients and residents want to register and want to vote at the time they're admitted. The state stepped up its registration efforts this fall after a request to increase voter turnout at state-run facilities from Disability Rights North Carolina, a nonprofit that advocates for the rights of the mentally and developmentally disabled.

[POLITICO] New York Republican Rep. Peter King...U.S. Representative for New York's 3rd (central Long Island) congressional district, serving since 1993. He is of the Publican persuasion and is known for his active support for the IRA Irish republican movement... went to war with his Republican colleagues on Wednesday after leaders spiked a Hurricane Sandy relief bill, calling on New Yorkers to stop all donations to GOP House members.

"These Republicans have no problem finding New York when they're out raising millions of dollars," King said on Fox News. "They're in New York all the time filling their pockets with money from New Yorkers. I'm saying right now, anyone from New York or New Jersey who contributes one penny to Congressional Republicans is out of their minds. Because what they did last night was put a knife in the back of New Yorkers and New Jerseyans. It was an absolute disgrace."

#2
Disgraceful? Just ask Mitt Romney, New York and New Jersey have always been such bastions of Republican support. King's admonishment will no doubt have a lasting impact on party contributiona. You want smoked pork for New Years, but a Big Green Egg. Not having a balanced budget, an emergency nest egg, or hazard insurance...that is the real disgrace!

#7
IMO this "Fiscal Cliff" brouhaha is the US equivalent of the 1917 Bolshevik revolution in Tsarist Russia, where the DemoLeft + anti-US Amer Globalists are the Bolsheviks + the GOP-Right + pro-US Globalists are the Mensheviks, AND WE ALL KNOW WHAT HAPPENED TO THE MENSHEVIKS.

The Leftists-Communists-Globalists are getting everything they want - SOON THEY WILL "PURGE" THE ALLEGED "FASCISTS" = RIGHTIST-NATIONALISTS + PRO-US GLOBALISTS.

> The Bolsheviks got rid of the Mensheviks.
> The Commies will get rid of the Fascists/Nationalist-Globalists.
> The Globalists will get rid of the Nationalists.
> "International Socialism/Revolution" vs. "Socialism/Revolution in One Country".

[Washington Post] The House of Representatives The words you're probably looking for are "unmitigated scoundrels." They can be used with or without reference to fornication. I usually use them with, in either the first or the middle position.
is poised to vote as early as tonight on a bill addressing a series of tax increases and spending cuts taking affect this week. But first politicians voted on a plan to freeze the salaries of politicians and federal employees.Don't bother. It's not gonna do you any good.
Despite Democratic objections, the bill passed 287 to 129, with 55 Democrats voting with Republicans to approve the measure.Districts aren't that safe, are they?They know Harry Reid's got their backs in the Senate...
House Democrats charged that the vote to freeze salaries was intended to provide political cover for conservative Republicans planning to vote against the fiscal cliff bill passed early Tuesday by the Senate.There's no political cover at the bottom of a crater.
The fiscal cliff deal, passed with 89 votes in the Senate, includes language that would block a 0.5 percent cost of living pay increase for politicians, reversing parts of an executive order Obama issued last week -- because Congress had yet to set the federal government's pay scale for 2013.Whoa! Reversed an imperial decree, did they? Took a bunch of guts.
Voting against the fiscal cliff plan might leave some House Republicans open to charges by future political opponents that they voted to give themselves a raise, or didn't vote to block a congressional pay raise, Democrats charged.

The GOP-backed bill introduced late Monday would freeze the salaries of politicians and the nation's 2 million federal employees for the remainder of fiscal 2013. Currently, federal worker salaries are frozen through the end of a short-term spending agreement that expires in March. As part of efforts to curtail the deficit, federal employees have not seen a cost of living increase in their paychecks in more than three years.And they're still overpaid for the same work done in the private sector...

An awful lot of people in the private sector have seen pay cuts over the same period, and at the state and local government levels an awful lot of jobs are gone for good. It's ugly for pretty much everyone these days.

#2
.5% would have been about $5.85 a week after taxes on my check.
Congrats, go pay off the deficit.

And there is no private equivalent to what I do, Project Engineer would be closest to it and would pay at least as much as what I make working for the gubmint. Way less hassles though.
So....I hope you feel better seeing my $5.85 a week go to Pakistain or spare parts for the Muslim Brotherhood's new F-16s.
The people in the private sector seeing pay cuts are probably not professionals, which is the bulk of what the Exectutive Branch employs in my work. Just because you got a pay cut from your job stamping out brake pads doesn't translate to me or anyone else. I have heard that argued a thousand times already and I dismiss it. Make govt a shitty job and the good govt workers will leave, the bad ones will always hang on and you will hav a Zimbobwe type govt in a few short years. Still expensive, but totally corrupt and useless.
Dont confuse govt employees with politicians.

#3
I am in the private sector. I and my professional colleagues had effective pay cuts this year - base pay stayed the same with no COLA while incentive pay (up to 10% or more of income in normal years, and a negotiated part of the salary package) was totally withheld. These are PhDs, licensed engineers, certified project managers etc., many with difficult to attain security clearances or other qualifications.

Me too, but fortunately for me, my part of the private sector is the oil industry, and, don't know this year's results yet, but last year was pretty good for me. Payback for the 1984-98 period where 2/3 of my peers lost their jobs and the rest of us got smaller increases than inflation.

#6
You guys in the oil and gas sector better keep that on the QT.
Next thing you know, people who work at Burger King or the local muffler plant will be after YOU for making "TOO MUCH MONEY"!
We are stoking the fires of jealousy, a very dangerous game indeed.

A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.

Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.

Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.